‘Missing,’ Season 1, Episode 5, ‘The Three Bears’

After the revelation at the end of the previous episode that CIA operative Paul Winstone is alive, rather than killed in an explosion a decade earlier, the agency freezes out his wife, Becca, played by Ashley Judd, because of fears that she is working with him.

Dax Miller (Cliff Curtis), the CIA chief in Paris, assigns an agent to track Becca after telling her she cannot help hunt Paul, now believed to have gone rogue 12 years ago when the Winstones were both CIA operatives based in Prague.

Becca resumes working with her former lover, Interpol officer Giancarlo Rossi (Adriano Giannini), and they head to Prague after Giancarlo shows her a video of Paul making a bank deposit there.

The CIA believes that Paul (Sean Bean) has kidnapped his son, Michael, now 18, who disappeared in the first episode. His disappearance took Becca away from her quiet life in suburban America to search for her son in Europe.

In Prague, Becca learns that Paul recently deposited 1,115 euros in a bank account to which she has access, although the attached safe-deposit box requires thumbprints from three people.

Becca believes Paul is trying to send her a message because their anniversary was Nov. 15, and she finds a chalk mark that conforms with their previous communication system.

In a flashback, we learn that Paul discovered Becca’s affair with Giancarlo and he blamed himself for neglecting his wife and son.

Meanwhile, Michael (Nick Eversman), who is being held in a castle in Poland or Russia, learns the background of a young woman, Oksana, who has befriended him. She helps him escape through the basement, where he finds guns and hazardous-materials suits.

Michael manages to get outside and discover a train, but thoughts of Oksana prevent him from leaving. Her warning is correct: the threat of harm to her is Michael’s weakness that his abductors are using to hold him.

In an amusing sequence, a full CIA surveillance team loses track of Becca in the streets of Prague. She then shows up next to Dax, offering coffee and agreeing to share information with him if he allows her to follow her leads without interference.

In another flashback, we see Paul meet and exchange papers with a man near a carnival where he and Becca have taken their child.

That man, and his crew, shows up at the spot where Becca expects to meet Paul and threatens her with a knife. In their brief conversation before Giancarlo rescues Becca, the man confirms that Michael is alive, for now.

After concluding that her husband is willing to kill her for the contents of the safe-deposit box, Becca tells Giancarlo that they must rob the bank to recover it.

The CIA, meanwhile, has been unable to access the box despite presenting a warrant for its contents.

One of Dax’s agents spots Becca entering the bank, where she is arranging for her own safe-deposit box, and Dax shows up there, telling bank officials that she and Giancarlo are planning a robbery.

Through some complicated manipulations of the bank’s security system, Becca puts the contents of the original safe-deposit box in a bag that Giancarlo retrieves from the trash while disguised as a police officer in the aftermath of Dax’s disclosure of the robbery.

Becca has managed to appear innocent of any wrongdoing and she and Giancarlo are set free by Prague authorities. But they tell Dax what they have found: a photo of a cabin that Paul had referred to his “castle,” a deed and stock certificates for a Russian company that are estimated to be worth $250 million.

In the final sequence, they and the CIA search the cabin and find it rigged to explode. As the seconds count down, Becca types in “Medved,” the name on the bank account, but it fails to stop the countdown.

Meanwhile, Michael tells Oksana that he came back so they can escape together.

This episode sheds more light on the personal lives of the characters, as Giancarlo tells Becca that she never saw Paul’s flaws and she tells him that she did not come to him after Paul’s “death” because she should never have let herself fall for him.

And we see that Dax is having an affair with a young agent, Violet Heath (Laura Donnelly), who again gets some of the best lines in the show’s somewhat improving dialogue.

But I didn’t spot any visual jokes in this episode, such as the quote by the fictional author Richard Castle (of ABC’s police drama “Castle”) on a book jacket shown in Episode 4.

About Speakeasy

Speakeasy is a blog covering media, entertainment, celebrity and the arts. The publication is produced by Barbara Chai and Jonathan Welsh with contributions from the Wall Street Journal staff and others. Write to us at speakeasy@wsj.com or follow us on Twitter at @WSJSpeakeasy or individually @barbarachai.